Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915). Russian composer and musician
Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist, writing music in the late-Romantic style in the earlier part of his career, although his work eventually developed a dissonant style influenced by Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal compositions. After disagreeing with his composition teacher, Anton Arensky, Scriabin began touring internationally as a pianist, and later became a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory, where he began composing prolifically, mostly for piano. He began his long-term project, Mysterium, in 1903 and left it incomplete at his death in 1915. Uses of Scriabin’s music for ballet and dance include Martha Graham’s Five Poems in 1927, and John Cranko’s Poème de l’Extase in 1970.